Think average player, not ‘hardcore friendless nerd living beneath a house’
The point here is that SOME modern games have gone far beyond all of this offering in terms of refinement and potential. Rather than repeat RE:1 and strip out any freedom to choose (i.e. = RE:5) I would have expected developers to say, take what was GREAT about that game and elaborate like crazy on that, and bring that into the future. Instead of say, corporate exec’s deciding that “Ok, what makes OUR car so different it’s nearly impossible to DRIVE!!!”
Let’s take the same game and analyze what was great: RE:1
Sound effects and fear generation by upending expectation.
Sound effects were inconsistent with what we sometimes saw or experienced, as sometimes they resulted in a monster, and sometimes not, leaving a player with a constant sense of dread. Effects were put to good use in generating actual fear by making every little sound a possible threat, and worry crept in. At some level, even a sprinkler might begin to sound like someone getting an ax to their neck, paranoia became rampant. The pacing was everything, like in a great movie. The point here is knowing how much control to exert to create fear, as player imagination does the real work, that is why horror books are scary.
Freedom
RE:1 had many doorways you could open and go into, equaling freedom. It was the very first popular game to really offer this in any tangible way, and was very inventive, giving players a sense of freedom and a path of possible escape…. and possibly not. It was new then, and many games even now do not use it. Granted, doors took a few moments to open, which also added to the worry.
Ironically: it was somehow inventive and novel when RPG Morrowind DID, many years later. Starting to see some parallels?
Minor resources
Guns, ammo and health were in short supply in RE:1, and that added to the worry and dread. We never knew what exactly to expect, and having so little ramped it up – because we had to make it last or we were dead. It is also in this version, (RE:5) but pointless, because the controls are STILL so pathetically lame a typical player will be dead (and thereby turned off from the game) before they even realize they are out of ammo.
Ironically: RE:1 monsters could be beaten, enemies often ran away from, puzzles to solve, places to explore, inventory management… wait, am I playing Oblivion or Fallout 3???
No, that was RE:1.
Recall also that Halo also introduced a concept of ‘resource management’ in some small way, and how very excited people were about that. Limitations? In an FPS? Novel! Other FPS’s have tried more management with less success, however (Chrome, Stalker, etc.)
Story
Resident Evil as an example has always had heavy reliance upon story, almost to the point of ignoring the gameplay itself. While many other games focus more on gameplay, this game often seemed to try and ignore that, and relied upon forced artificial means of fear creation. Early on, this was forgivable due to what small abilities existed (CPU, GPU) platform wise, and the newness of the medium. Modern games need deep stories too, but not to the detriment of wasting time in the game world. Imagine if the character in the RE movie had to do all of the things the player did when they faced the boss. What a long boring movie THAT would be.
The difference between spending time and wasting it is (maybe) whether you enjoyed the experience or just felt cheated out of that time, after all – in your life you do have a limited amount of it.
Something better?
What with free roaming game engines like Far Cry2 having accurate guns and vehicle-wandering freedom, Capcom could easily have done better. Make a freeform game so that you MUST go into that area and deal with the zombies (etc.) to solve/fix/alter a problem/quest/rescue/whatever. Limit ALL resources like ammo, guns, health packs, fuel, etc. Make buildings something to explore and investigate, and elaborate. Freedom would always be there, for respite and illusion of control. But that control would degrade quickly in an area when faced with overwhelming odds.
Vehicles would not always need to work. Some of them could just be junk that looked usable, and not even start or, need to be jumped or jacked or a battery or… you get the picture. Resource control is what the game has really missed, (in dynamic game playing, in my opinion) because in the modern world – we often have a ton of material goods we can get, start cutting us off and we get VERY worried. Hellooo – gas crunch???
They could have really taken the game somewhere, using some current ideas by elaborating on them. Big life-like city to explore, massive monsters to find, battle or avoid. Hundreds of areas to discover, and co-op could have been ‘groundbreaking’ (salespeople LOVE that word!) using the limited resources via sharing, protection, rescue, etc. – all the things they SAY exist, but barely does in the most nauseating of ways. Where many modern games find themselves in mere refinement of old concepts, they might have created entirely new vistas. Someone once said ‘creation of a new idea is merely the juxtaposition of two older ones’. If they took all they knew about fear and horror, and implemented sound, ‘free roam’ arenas, controls, music and AI in new ways, maybe cardboard monsters wouldn’t require such crippling control mechanisms to escape being so 2D.
There were so many possibilities with RE:5 that it really boggles the mind how Capcom could continue to create the same old mediocrity, (or any other developer, for that matter). Four iterations later, nothing is REALLY new, inventive, changed or offering something that truly generates actual fear – just a tired set of frustration inducing cheap tricks and worn out gimmicks as used by every ham and huckster. I am sure that there are the die hards that can hardly wait to purchase, and I am quite sure many will also be taken in by the advertising. I’ll remind all of you that you could have nearly the same experience by searching the bargain bins for something in the $5.00 category, as the fundamental overall play experience will not differ all that dramatically.
Seriously: You can pay for plastic surgery, add big boobs, a fancy dress and awesome hair. But in the end, deep down, Frankenstein is still a patched together ugly mess with the remotest of brains or personality.
RE:5 is not so different from so many other steaming pieces of dreck that gets released every year, that consumers throw their money at. The list is very long, and it exists for every platform, whether PC, PS1, PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, N64, Gamecube, Wii…whatever – they have all had about a 70% dreck rate from the very beginning of game making.
Yet, it depends on your point of view, and, if you have the money to, burn – by all means…go ahead. Your garage is waiting.
